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Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Facebook

I joined Facebook a few weeks ago in hopes to promote my etsy shop and instead I've found a bunch of people from my past that I'm actually quite happy to be reacquainted with!

When I left high school, I left pretty much everything behind. I had a couple friends that I maintained relationships with but for the most part I cut ties with that chapter of my life. Sometimes when looking back at your life you realize that you threw the baby out with the bath water. There were a lot of events that happened, that at that young age, I didn't fully understand how to process or heal. Some didn't need either but back then, I basically avoided looking at any of it. If I experienced pain, I avoided rereading the chapter.

It was a defense mechanism that I continued through most of my twenties. In my thirties, I finally found a way to look at all of these events and heal them as they happened. I learned not to associate people with the feelings that were generated by their actions or to connect the feelings to them because of their association to me at that time.

I still am a bit elusive in my relationships with people because I truly am a free spirit, but unless you've directly wronged me or repeatedly treated me in a way that is inappropriate, I am always your friend. I guess in a way it was time for me to reflect on the events that happened at that time and to heal any wounds that may still need to be healed.

There is still a chapter of my life that seems to remain untouched and unresolved: my art school days. I don't know if I will get the chance to revisit them or not. I think these were my most profound and most painful. I maintained relationships with no one from that period even though some of the people I met penetrated my soul and have stayed with me all these years. It was the first place I ever felt at home and the first place that inspired me everyday. Personally, I was a trainwreck, but who isn't at 19 or 20? I chalk up the loss of the potential lifelong friends I could have had from this period as the price I paid to protect my fragile ego of that time. It doesn't make me long any less for those relationships but it does put it in perspective. That ego wasn't worth the cost of those friendships but unfortunately hindsight is 20/20.

2 comments:

Hi, found you via Entrecard. I love this post. I recently joined Facebook for the same reason, but I too have been pleasantly distracted from friends from the past.

I do think I understand a bit about what you're saying about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I've done that, too, but as I get older - and I hope, wiser - I'm learning to keep the good, ditch the bad.